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Trafigura

District Judge Richard Chapman, senior vice-president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges, recently wrote in the Solicitors Journal:

“Senior Costs Judge Hurst has recently decided that interest on costs starts to run from the date of the costs certificate, not from the date when the order for costs was made, and further that such interest belongs to the client, not to the solicitors”

I think that may be a bit of an oversimplification of the Trafigura decision, although I note that my quick summary of the judgment when it came out said something similar.

It is not an oversimplification: it is wrong. This is not what the SCJ said. He held that the incipitur rule still applied, although on the facts concluded that there was good reason to disapply it. All aspects of the decision are subject to an appeal listed on 30th and 31st Jan 2012.